Just how "old school" are you?

kevmarks said:

I wonder if anybody ever overclocked a speak and spell

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How d'ya think they did the voices for the smurfs?

How d'ya think they did the voices for the smurfs?

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thats the funniest thing I have heard all day . The smurf producers where hard core overclockers. I bet water cooling was inolved.

Lets see...

A Compaq "portable" XT 8088.
Ran default at 4.77MHz, and 10MHz with turbo engaged!
Had a built in keyboard and monitor in the carry-case.
What a lovely amber color the screen was too.
Had 2 5 1/4" floppies, and a 20MB RLL hard drive.
I upgraded the memory from 512k to 640k, dont ask what that cost....ugh
Finally down the road, I splurged on a high-speed modem, for $200. Was a lightning fast 1200 baud rockwell!!

I still have it, dont know if it still runs.
I dont have the time to wait for it to boot up...hehe

Since we were on the speak and spell thing, and I know this wasn't a true computer (or a computer at all), but, did anyone here have the 2XL "talking robot" that used 8-track tapes? I did, still do and it still works. I broke it out a few months ago just to test it.. Great little toy..

Man this thread is bigger than I ever expected. I gotta admit, I've had a good time reading through these. It's pretty sad, but I remember all of these things. At least I don't feel like an old man here anymore.

CrystalMethod said:

...I miss playing munch-man...

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I'm breaking out the old TI and firing that game up tonight. I have about 4 or 5 of those cartridges sitting around. I remember saving all of my programs and junk to the cassette player with that computer too. I also remember walking into a Sears and seeing the optional 5 1/4" floppy drive for around $200 and drooling.

palee 72 said:

did anyone here have the 2XL "talking robot" that used 8-track tapes

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Never had one, but my friend down the street from me did. I thought he was the luckiest kid around.

Wookie8662 said:

Finally down the road, I splurged on a high-speed modem, for $200. Was a lightning fast 1200 baud rockwell!!

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I remember when I bought an internal modem for my 386 laptop. It was 2x faster than yours and in only cost me about $250.


During my college days, my roomate had his Commodore 64 at the apartment. We used a speech synth program on it and created a message to the effect that the local phone company was going to be interupting service on the phone lines for 6 hours and then called random numbers and played the message into the phone. We gave them a phone number to call if they had any questions. The phone number belonged to the guys that lived above us. You could hear their phone ringing for the rest of the day.

P.S. - Who else remembers playing pong on their T.V.? I remember when my dad bought the game and hooked it up. We sat in awe of the technology.

::::remembers:::::

Pong (bow down to the TV gods)... How did I ever survive without this game? This paddle is an amazing piece of equipment.. unbelieveable craftsmanship... it makes the TV do things I've never seen before..

:::::fades back to present::::::

UT2K3 anyone? The grafix are amazing............

with tears in the eyes I can recall that I learn to program on
a borrowed Sinclair ZX81
then a BBC Acorn (6502), a competitor to Apple IIe
then there was this Xerox machine which was not a PC , but on which I played this addictive text game about exploring a cave
then IBM PC clone (with a fantastic 8 MHZ turbo switch) from University
then a BULL SPS-6 (scientific mid-frame)
then a BULL DPS-6 (mainframe) for work
then I bought my first computer an Amiga1000
I then got a 486-25, an Amiga 2000, an Amiga 3000 through work
I then bough a Pentium 100 MHZ @120, upgraded to 150 at 166 !!! (used for a time by son)
then a PII 350 (used by daughter)
then a Duron 650 upgraded to 1300

All in all for more than 25 years,
ASM, APL, BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN , JAVA, PASCAL,...

And you know what:
I no longer work in IS , but I still have fun with computers.

PS: My true love was the Amiga

PS: My true love was the Amiga

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Without a doubt. Anybody ever have an A4000T? I would have sold my own mother for one of those bad boys.

1. Balley Arcade Sytem: You would attach your own tape recorder and program BASIC with a very small keypad (competed against the early Atari because you could play games...'Gunfight' was the best and it was pre-loaded along with 'Scribble' and 2 more but I can't remember off-hand)

2. Ti 99/4a (I don't remember what every happened to it)

3. Commodore 64 with 'real' floppy drive and Commodore Monitor: (I just threw it away in a dumpster because we moved and everything still worked with a ton of great games about 9 months ago )

I'm jealous of those guys who were able to afford the Amiga's. I would have given my left arm for it's graphics.

Eliminator said:

I'm jealous of those guys who were able to afford the Amiga's. I would have given my left arm for it's graphics.

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Wow, someone's jealous of me... lol.. never thought that would happen..

I still have my Amiga 500, with xternal 2nd drive, 512k ram expansion + clock (still keeps time), some form of commodor monitor (which was cool, it doubled as a tv as it has a/v in/out Just plug in a VCR and away you went.. great for collage), and a Star dot matrix printer, and 2400baud modem.

I still have all the above mentioned equipment and it all still works. I have a ton of games for it. I forget which version of workbench i used, but I did get it in 1991, and used the version that it came with.. I have a few games that I never played because they were 12 disks or more and I spent more time switching disks than I did playing the game (The Adventures of Willy Beamish & one of the Leisure Suit Larry games). I needed a HD for it, but never got one. Wonder if I could find one cheep now...?????

re:

good ol' 486 dx33

good ol' 486 dx33

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new boy

I am not completely sure on the specs since I was 6 when my dad got someone to build are first computer, but to the best of my knowledge:

built in 1989, I think total cost was around $4000
20 mhz
a wopping 65 meg hard drive that cost $650
5 1/4" floppy
good ole DOS
13 in color monitor

later upgraded with cdrom, sound card, modem and a increase to a Pentium 133

I can still remember playing all the old games on it and being told what not to type in DOS so that I didn't erase everything.

You want the Complete list of systems ive owned? (all were complete ssytem over a period of 6yrs
Ibm PS2 286~ still have
HP- P75- gone
(Mine below)
12 486 comptuers atleast
20 Pentium based (have 4)
7 PII based
PIII 550 dell (Have)
pIII 450
PIII 550
PIII 667
PIII 733 (have)
PIII 750
PIII Dual 800 (have)
PIII 866
PIII 1GIG(have)
Amd Duron 600
Amd Duron 700(Have)
Amd Duron 800
Amd Duron 850 (have)
Amd Duron 1.2gig
Amd MP 1200
Amd Xp 1800
Amd Xp 1800
Amd Xp 1600 (Have)
Amd Xp 1600 (have)
Intel P4 2.26(have)
I bought all my own stuff~ ive owned so many because i build them, use them and then sell them for upgrades to otheres~
Spyder

Surprised not many people had Apples way back when. I remember playing Moon Patrol on my Apple ][+ which had an outrageous 48 k of system ram and a 16 k FULL LENGTH expansion card. OH yeah. Had the green screen with anti-glare coating, TWO 5.25 drives, an Epson dot matrix printer, and later on got a 1200 baud modem ($350!).

I remember going over to visit a budy who ran a BBS. He had this bohemoth 20 MEG hard drive--external SCSI of course (must have been SCSI 1?). Anyhow it was frickin' HUGE capacity-wise and dimension wise--kind of looked like a modern APC UPS. I seem to remember he paid $700 for it.

How many others POURED through the telephone-book-like computer shopper looking at the 'latest' in technology?

badvector said:

It's the amazing Commodore PET. Took computer programming in highschool using this. Since then, I've owned the following:

Check the specs on that PET..It was a screamer in it's day. I remember programming a blackjack game in commodore basic on that thing. Anyone else remember those?

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Yehaw! The PET was the first computer I programmed on, this although I was in elementary school back then, not highschool.

The first PC's I used where Atari 400-800 ST models with cassette tape storage. My parents decided these where immature technology though (spot-on call) and waited until the Apple 2+ to buy our first family computer. Actually we had a Franklin 1000, an Apple 2+ clone. It had the language card (boosting ram to 64K, 2e equivelent), two 5 1/4 floppies, 9" green monochrome monitor, and an Okidata ML92+ 9 pin dot martrix that I can still hear if I concentrate. This was a $2500 personal computer in 1982, and a lot more fun than the (then) new IBM PC.

oh boy, i cant recall what is was because i was too lil to rember, but it was a cassete type deal
then we had an old XT
i was then presented with a 486 SX 33 (dont know how many people had the SX's, with the lack of a coproc and all)
then to a cyrix 150
and my current SLOT-A 800 which i dumped for a 900

look at my signature

there's the list used machines (7 long years )

cpu's:
i386
i486dx4
p75
p233mmx
p!!!800EB
athlon xp1800+ (that's what i currently usin')

os'es:
dos 6 series
windows 3.1
windows 95, 98,
windows xp pro (that's what i currently usin')
and some free unix variants (not 4 primary usin')

First exposure to 'computing' at age 5 I told my dad I wanted a computer like on Star trek, and he explained what was possible so we built an 8 BIT binary adder out of 12Volt telco relays.

17 switches (word 1, word 2, OPERATE), 9 light bulbs ) 8 bit output + carry/overflow)

LOL it was alot of fun to build, took us months, I did alot of the soldering. Learned binary, Ohms law, all of the good stuff.

Few years later it would have been the Altair 8080 trainer.

SOL 2000 CP/M computer.
My first mod, a homebrew z80 CP/M conputer, all wirewrap and borrowed perherpherials
An AppleII, no floppys
a Tandy TRS80 Model 1, tape recorder only
Followed by a Commodore Pet with Chicklet keyboard and builtin dataset.
DEC PDP-8 at school. big huge beasty, 8" floppies.
Commodre 64 and 1541, paid like $695.00 for the CPU.
Sanyo MBC 555 and MSDOS 1.0 ($999.00 i think?)
Amiga 1000 way too much, had a developers kit.
IBM PCXT Special from school, like $600.00
Amiga2000 another grand.
Hacked the XT into a 286 (swapped the moboard) had to hacksaw a case support to fit the AT board in. (a trend?)
386
486
Pentium166 - 233
Pentuim II 233, 300, 350

god it never ends does it?

memory remains!